June 15
To Heidelblog and David Hall for the part of David Hall's articles (Part 1 and Part 2) that review what went on at the most recent Presbyterian Church of America General Assembly meeting.
It seems that's some labels have acquired unexpected implied traits. So is the case with the the conservative use of the labels 'conservative' and 'progressive.'
Conservatives seem to always imply infallibility when using the word 'conservative' and being fatally flawed with the 'progressive' label. And so, that reminds me of a Martin Luther King Jr. quote from his speech against the Vietnam War:
'The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.'
Because of their use of the above mentioned implied traits, conservatives appear to be replacing the word 'Western' with the word 'conservative' in the above quote. And so it seems that it is conservatives who are actually putting themselves in an even a less flattering light than they intend to put progressives in due to the traits they imply when using those two labels.
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Aug 3
To Heidelblog and Michael Wear and his article advertising his book that labels the political divisions in America and the Church 'Political Therapeutic Deism. This appeared in Heidelblog.
The full article can be found at:
https://mereorthodoxy.com/political-therapeutic-deism
It is understandable as to why politics has a divisive effect on the Church. It is because, among other issues, politics deal with an array of moral values. And which political groups we most associate with can partially reveal the moral values about which we are most concerned. And our differences can arise from having different priorities of moral concerns people have.
But since no political ideology or party encompasses all moral values about which we should be concerned with as Christians, each political ideology and party are not only incomplete, but inconsistent as well. Take what is called pro-life for example. To reduce the meaning of being pro-life to concerns about abortion produces vast inconsistencies in what it should mean to be pro-life. Likewise, to not include concerns about abortion is to produce a deep inconsistency with what it should mean to be pro-life. And so which political ideology or party is consistently pro-life? And here we should note that being consistently pro-life does not mean that we have covered all moral issues with which politics is involved.
Since I am not now able to read the whole article, I will speculate as to what isn't covered that can explain what the writer wanted to explain. The divisions occur when we act like the Pharisee from the parable of the two men praying (Luke 18:9-14) with our moral concerns. That occurs when we exalt ourselves over others because they don't share our priority of values or even values while neglecting to be even aware of the moral values that our own political views fail to adequately address. What James said in the second half of chapter 2 in his epistle also explains why we have divisions.
That Phariseeism is something to avoid almost at all costs. Why? Consider the plight of that Pharisee from the parable.
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August 27
To Heidelblog and D.G. Hart whose article was quoted in part on HeidelBlog. His article reviewed Tim Alberta's book: <I>The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory</i>. Alberta's book is about the Evangelism and its recent political ventures.
Hart's full article can be found at:
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/whats-left-to-say-about-evangelicals/
The trouble with Evangelicalism is, like Christian Fundamentalism, how it is defined. The original definitions of both terms focused on their religious beliefs. But then, because of the traits of some of its members, Evangelicalism's working definition began go deemphasize its religious beliefs and began to revolve around traits that had nothing to do with Evangelicalism's religious tenets just as what happened to Christian Fundamentalism.
As with Christian Fundamentalism, the change in the working definition of Evangelicalism was in part due to the desire of some Evangelicals to distance themselves from fellow Evangelicals because of their traits, in particular their political views. And so some Evangelicals decided to separate themselves because of their political disagreements rather than to simply admit that Evangelicals do not form a monolith. Had they done that, it is possible that Evangelicalism's working definition would still revolve around its religious beliefs.
History shows that Evangelicalism's venture into the political realm started decades earlier that what Hart claimed. It started with its opposition to the government's efforts to force racial integration onto some Evangelical institutions such as Bob Jones. What followed that became the focus on abortion. And what ignited the biggest Evangelical passion for politics was the 2015 Obergefell Decision by the Supreme Court. Since then, a concerted effort by a mixture of Evangelicals, Christian Fundamentalists, and Roman Catholics to '<b>take back</b>' America to its Christian roots has begun. Unfortunately, America's Christian roots were determined greatly by a demographics that no longer exists.
I can't speak to Hart's comments on Alberta's book since I have not read his book. But there are things about what Hart said that indicate that, like what a baseball catcher does with pitches, he is sometimes more interested in framing events and descriptions than being fair and objective. Take the following quote from Hart's article for example:'unpeaceful protests on January 6, 2021'
How is it that a violent action taken to overthrow the results of a legitimate election in an attempt to keep the sitting President in office can be legitimately described as being merely an 'unpeaceful protest'?
OR
'As dubious as the diversity rationale now appears—how could white Protestants be outsiders in white Protestant America?—the study of evangelicals coincided with the need to understand a new and vigorous electoral bloc, namely, the Religious Right. '
The problem with that quote is in the question asked. Instead of asking how could white Protestants be outsiders in a white Protestant America, Hart should have asked how did white Protestants BECOME outsiders? In addition, curiosity about Evangelicalism might have been initiated by JFK's Presidential campaign and questions about whether he could be elected because of his Roman Catholic affiliation. Also, what diversity rationale is Hart claiming to be dubious?
OR
'The election of 2016 practically took all scholars by surprise (some needed smelling salts). It also gave legitimacy to scholarship that explained Donald Trump’s popularity among white evangelicals. Several evangelical scholars went to work to explain the racism, psychological instability, and misogyny that contributed to born-again Protestant votes for Trump. At the same time, evangelical leaders and pundits piled on with books of their own (for instance, David French, Russell Moore, and Peter Wehner) that show evangelicals to be hypocritical Christians and unreliable citizens. What used to be a success story of an obscure group rising to prominence in American life, evangelicalism is now one of the many social ills responsible for spreading illiberal sentiments among the American people.'
With Evangelicalism's ties to America's past which Hart mentions early in his article, perhaps America's history of racism also began to shed light on pathologies that exist in Evangelicalism. Here we should note that Hart is a historian, and yet he does not attribute any of the problems in America's racist past to Evangelicalism's present social standing.
IMO, if my fellow Evangelicals and Fundamentalists want to do well in politics, which is what Hart wants them to do, then they must see the current political battle in the West between Democracy with equality vs authoritarianism with hierarchy. They need to see this distinction and understand which side that they are currently, and unfortunately, on. I hasten to add that how Hart sees Evangelicals and Fundamentalists would do well in politics could very well differ from how I see them doing well.
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August 30
To Heidelblog and Chris Gordon for the part of Gordon's article that discusses why people reflexively follow Pastors who present themselves as omnicompetent. The title of the Heidelblog post is different.
Chris Gordon's complete article can be found at:
https://agradio.org/blog/the-cult-following-of-the-omnicompetent-pastor
I am not writing to disagree with anything that Gordon said. In fact, I agree with what he wrote. But I wanted to add something that might help us understand why, even in not troubling times, people are looking for authoritative sounding voices to follow.
It has to do with what Fromm described as the passive authoritarian personality type, or the authoritarian follower to be less verbose. Such people are not just attracted to authoritative sounding voices, they are also looking for simplistic answers that they can understand. But most of all, they want a, what I call, nanny thinker who can tell them what to think. They want to listen to someone with whom they can reflexively agree.
Fromm said that the basic motivation for the authoritarian follower is fear. It can be a fear because of the confusion of the times. But the fear is more general than that. The fear comes from a need to be attached to something significant. And so the more authoritative a leader can sound or the more credentials a leader can portray themselves as having, the more personal significance can be gained by attaching oneself to that person.
One factor that can mitigate the fear that authoritarian followers can have is to become more independent in their reasoning. But a balance is needed here. That is because there is an authority figure who is omnicompetent to speak on all subjects. That is God. And He has spoken to us in His Word. But what muddies the waters here is how does one interpret God's Word. We do have guides from the past and present, but they are never infallible and were often so influenced by their times that they sometimes read ideas into the Scriptures. And though there are issues in which there can be divergence in thinking among those who believe in Christ, there are other issues in which we can't afford to tolerate diverse views.
But the above introduces a complexity that many authoritarian followers cannot tolerate at the current time. And so the solution is to try to have ourselves and our fellow believers be more like the Bereans who tested everything by the Scriptures (see Acts 17). They both depended on the Scriptures and had a degree of independence so that they even tested the words of the Apostle Paul by the Scriptures.
And so we need to move people to become a mixture of being dependent and independent. We need to be dependent on God's Word and independent enough from people, even the authoritative speaking kind, so that we can learn from them without reflexively accepting everything they say.
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